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Everyone's talking about Ashley Dupre's tattoo that reads, in faux Latin: "tutela valui."

Dupre was Eliot Spitzer's favorite prostitute, so people want to understand the words. But like those ridiculous Chinese characters fools have permanently inked on their carcasses, Dupre's tattoo botches the language. The Daily News delves into scholarly interpretation of the whore's bikini line:

Tutela, which is related to tutor, has to do with a protector or guardian. Valui appears to be a past form of the word strong.

"So I guess you would say it means, 'I have a strong patron' or 'I have a strong keeper,'" said Doug Machle, assistant to the chairman in the classics department at the University of Washington.

"Or, actually, it's more like, 'My guardian was strong.'"...

Daniel Nodes, a classics professor at Ave Maria University in Florida, translated it as "I've been well and remain that way because I have protection."

Mark Buchan, a classics professor at Columbia, took a different tack, musing that it could mean "safe haven."

The Columbia professor gives Ashley credit ? even as she tattoos herself with bad Latin ? for seeing herself (or her body part) as the strong one and having a sense of humor about sex.

Full post as published by Althouse on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).